Eureka 433: A decade of Pampa, a brand first inspired by homesickness for Argentina

0:15You're listening to Eureka on Monocle Radio, brought to you by the team behind The Entrepreneurs, the show all about inspiring people, innovative companies and fresh ideas in global business. I'm Tom Edwards. Victoria Aguirre is the co-founder and creative director at Pampa, a B Corp certified rug and homewares brand with its roots in Argentina. With a background in photojournalism, Victoria didn't really plan to launch a business, but a chance encounter on a trip through Latin America changed her course. What followed was a move across continents and the beginning of a brand built on heritage craft and sustainable design.

0:52So how do you transform homesickness into a business? And how do you scale when your supply chain depends on small batch handmade production? Well, here is Victoria with more on how this globe-trotting journey began.

1:10I used to live in Buenos Aires, where I was born, and I used to work as a photojournalist for different magazines, and I saw these two Argentinian surfers that they were surfing the whole Pacific coast of Latin America, known as Gauchos del Mar. I proposed to one of the magazines if I could run an interview on them. So I arrived to the Atacama Desert in Chile. I met with these guys. They were just camping, and I was going to photograph the whole story through Chile. they just met this Aussie guy called Carl who now is my partner and business partner and they invited him to jump on the truck that they had and camping through like middle of nowhere basically looking for waves and I met Carl and we fell in love and he was doing the same thing basically surfing through the whole Pacific coast of Latin America for a whole year and he was like I'm coming to the end of my trip I have to go back home Do you want to come with me?

2:10And I was like, well, I don't even know where Australia is basically. But yeah, that's like, it was not in my radar. That's for sure. I took the leap. I was in love. I'm still alive, you know, after 12, 13 years. And I moved to Australia. When I arrived to Australia, I was, yeah, kind of like falling into this homesickness, but a real homesickness where I was really sad. aside from living in like paradise because Australia is so, so beautiful. One day I was like, look, if this relationship has to work, we need to start doing something that matters for me. You know, I was still doing photography, but like I left my career basically.

2:52We were walking down the street and I saw a little shop with some Bolivian frazadas, those colourful ones, and I was like, that's what we're doing. Exactly, that's what we are doing, Carl. We're going to go back home. we're going to go traveling kind of re-immerse ourselves into how we met and try to find artisans that work with textiles and bring those textiles to Australia and start selling them plus we're going to sell our photography I had a big body of work back then I do photography like horse photography prints and they also are available on the website I was telling him like look we're going to do this beautiful brand it's going to called Pampa that is the place where my family It was originally lived and raised in Argentina.

3:36So through that homesickness and then that missing home and the desire to be connected to my culture, Australia has a completely different culture to Latin America, the business was born.

3:55I did a website before even having the product, basically. So the brand always had like a really strong sense of story and beautiful language. And then the product kind of fit that. The first small collection, we did took it on our suitcases, basically. It was very small on the way back from Argentina to Australia. And we did this newsletter. We sent a bunch of emails. But what we did that was really special is that we drove down to Sydney. We were living in a small coastal town up north and Sydney being one of the biggest cities or the biggest cities in Australia. And we knocked doors of the best homewares and furniture businesses.

4:38And we were lucky that one of them really, really liked the product. We did this whole showing and they bought almost the entire collection. This is like the great kickoff. You know, if we're here, people will trust the brand. And we always knew we wanted to push the brand. The brand had to become desirable, aside from the product. So this furniture business in Sydney, which we're still friends with, helped us establish amongst their connections, and that's how it all started.

5:11We always knew we didn't want to work with a factory. Basically, in Argentina, the art of weaving is in extinction. We found out that the hard way, because we started looking for artisans in the tourism trail, and there was none, or everything was coming from Bolivia and Peru and made by who knows. So we started really deeply investigating and traveling. By investigating, I mean being on the road, knocking on doors through remote areas of the country that we knew that there was these hand looms on the backyards of people, that romantic story. And it was true. There was a handful of artisans in northern Argentina.

5:54They weave in their own backyard. And we started talking and meeting with them and seeing if they wanted to start weaving with us, working with us. Today, we have a relationship that is almost like a family, basically. We speak every day. And we built this connection and almost like a net of artisans through all that area. They really love the project. And I designed the rugs and they make them. We just love that process where it's very slow. It's very remote. They work from home. They get really well paid. They work with their own elements from nature. Everything is hand dyed. And most of our dyes are naturally dyed, not all, but most, from elements from around their home.

6:37Some of them have their own sheep that they use for the product. Some of them, we take the wool to them. And we always knew that that was the passion behind the product. the people, the people that make these rugs and homewares, because we also do homewares, not just rugs, was the purpose and the driven heart of Pampa, really. And that's why we B Corp certified, to empower them out of poverty. That's our main B Corp certification angle. You know, you have different angles when you're certified to become a B Corp company. Ours was focusing on the people behind Pampa.

7:16we go through certain challenges with the way our rugs are produced because it's small and like there's not that many artisans in argentina though they have been growing and learning and learning and learning more people want to work which is amazing but there is expansion to other countries like peru bolivia mexico like we would love to keep within the latin america scheme and like angle of things. So we are looking at producing elsewhere as well, because this being in the US now, there's a lot of growth and a lot of potential for the brand. I feel like that we can manage it because there are these models of like type of artisans and little workshops and co-ops around Latin America that we could explore.

8:00And to be honest, within Argentina, there's still room for growth for us. It's not that this is happening tomorrow. Our artisans are getting more friends, more family members, cousins, that they used to go move to the bigger cities and lost their cultural pride, basically, by starting to live somewhere else that is so detached from where they used to live. So now they're staying at home and that empowerment has been so beautiful to observe. And I think it's there and it's growing and we're there for the ride.

8:39That was Victoria Aguirre, the co-founder and creative director of Pampa. And you can learn more about the story and the business by heading to pamper.com.au. And that's all for this episode of Eureka. We'll be back at the same time next week. Eureka is produced by Laura Kramer with audio editing by Jack Dewars. You can listen again and find out more at monocle.com or follow us and browse the archive wherever you get your audio. If you'd like to get in touch with the team, do feel free to email Laura on lrk at monocle.com. I'm Tom Edwards. Goodbye, and thanks for listening to Eureka.